Just say no

Tuesday

Apr 28, 2009 at 5:53 AMApr 28, 2009 at 5:54 AM

STEVE WILLIAMS Opinion Page Editor

Sunday the Los Angeles Times came out in support of five of the six propositions on the May 19 ballot. Only 1B, the measure which would restore $9.3 billion in public funding for public schools and community colleges would get if the economy were doing as well now as it was when Proposition 98 (designed to guarantee adequate school funding) was passed in 1988. The Times says 1B is on the ballot as a sop to the California Teachers Association, meant to persuade the CTA not to oppose the entire package. No doubt true; union dues have made the CTA rich and powerful, and the liberal left never offends the CTA.

The rest of the propositions, the Times says, are "necessary evils." And why are they evil, exactly? We think further encroachment on individual incomes via tax hikes, and further intrusion into private lives - which the propositions would do - are evil in themselves. The Times thinks they're "necessary," because without them state government would default on its financial commitments.

We think, to the contrary, that financial default - and the accompanied retrenching of state government and a pullback of its ability to tax and intrude, not to mention tax and spend - would be a good thing. A "necessary" thing.

Ron Getty points out in "Taxpayers and tax moochers" elsewhere on this page today that the state employs 345,000 people, and those employees average $85,000 in annual pay and benefits. In comparison, private industry percapita pay and benefits averages $45,000. That's a huge, wholly unjustified, and, frankly, outrageous compensation gap. Only bankruptcy would force state government to more closely align public payrolls with the real world's payrolls.

Mr. Getty sees public employees as moochers off the private sector. Can't argue with that; the private sector is the ultimate source of state revenues; the public sector simply feeds off those revenues, and gives back ... not much.

And as we've noted here before, there's a strong possibility that bankruptcy would finally force California's voters to face the reality that we're here because we keep sending people to Sacramento who don't understand that high taxes and overregulation harm the economy by crippling capitalism's ability to generate revenue. And jobs. And prosperity.

The Times apparently believes the same; more taxation is the only way out of the mess. Our view is that more taxation will only make the mess worse. As we keep saying, vote no on 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D and 1E. The last measure, 1F, deserves a yes vote only because it would restrict our elected state representatives' ability to give themselves pay hikes. Would that we could restrict the rest of the public sector's ability to mooch as well.